Cpu Spikes

Poddy · #1 03-06-2003

Gday all,
im running a pentium 4 2.4ghz, with over a gig of ddr333 ram, and an Echo Audio Layla. According to the vst performance window i was running at about 10% maximum. However if i open an internet explorer window, or open the control panel, or something else i would consider fairly mundane, the cpu usage overload light pops on, and the audio drops out for a second or so. Does anyone have any reasoning as to why this would be happening? Or any work arounds for it.
Cheers.

NYMorningstar · #2 03-06-2003

The simple answer is don't web surf while you record and mix. The reason behind it is everytime you open a program it reserves some RAM for itself excluding other programs from using it. My guess is the microsoft programs are Ramhogs.

skankster · #3 03-08-2003

I have the same problem, and I don't even have internet access or any other programs installed.

I never had the problem until I installed Windows XP. I shoulda stuck with Win98 - but I did have the occasional freeze, and people were saying XP is more stable . . .

Ashura · #4 03-09-2003

yo skankster...it sounds like i have almost the same setup as you. I'm on 98 right now, and I have no idea what it is, but I am crashing INCREDIBLY. I literally can't go through a mixdown without crashing at least 3 times per hour. I really don't know what it is, it wasn't this bad before. I opened up the VST Performance and it seems like I'm usually around the 50-60 level, and then it'll spike to 90 and crash. My thought was to move up to XP, actually, but if you're saying its causing problems. I end up with the death screen and end up rebooting, I spend more time with that than actually doing music. I defrag and all but it doesn't seem to work.

How did you get your 98 to work so well? My CPU is top of the line, I don't think its that...did you do much configuration with your Layla?

If you could help me out at all, you got no idea how much it'd make my life easier...

skankster · #5 03-10-2003

wow - it's hard to know - could be any one or more of a million things - bot here's a weird one i found out about by accident.

try going to options/audio setup/system, and in the audio performance box (upper left corner) and set "number of channels" to 12-16 MORE than you are using in your song. this seems counter intuitive to me, because i thought that more tracks would use more processor power - but for some reason, on my system, if i'm getting close to using as many tracks in the song as i have set in this box, it starts to choke.

while you're there - look at Audio I/O (ASIO Device)) and make sure your drivers are set to the Layla/Darla/Gina ASIO Drivers, then open up the ASIO Control Panel and experiment with raising the buffer size. it'll increase your latency, but that beats crashing all the time.

hope this helps,
skankster

Ashura · #6 03-10-2003

skankster...thanx im gonna give that a try tonight. i usually do increase the track size and all, along with the disk size below it. and the default for the asio was echo layla/gina/darla.

asides from installing the drivers for the soundcard, have you, or anyone, changed any of the settings for the Layla? have you tampered with any of those configurations to optimize it? I just pretty much installed the layla driver and cubase and worked from there...how much tweaking did you do to the soundcard software?

skankster · #7 03-12-2003

Ashura -

just so we're on the same page - it's not the track size i'm talkin' 'bout, it's the number of trax. i think that's what you meant, but just to be sure . . .

i haven't done any tweaking to Layla or to the drivers . . . i experimented a bit with the buffer size in options/audio setup/system/asio control panel - i'm currently running at 512 samples (13 milliseconds) but that's about it

yo Poddy - did you ever find any solution to your problem, cuz i'm still having that problem and can't figure it out

skankster

ALBERTPIKE · #8 03-12-2003

[QUOTE]Originally posted by skankster
[B]wow - it's hard to know - could be any one or more of a million things - bot here's a weird one i found out about by accident.

try going to options/audio setup/system, and in the audio performance box (upper left corner) and set "number of channels" to 12-16 MORE than you are using in your song. this seems counter intuitive to me, because i thought that more tracks would use more processor power - but for some reason, on my system, if i'm getting close to using as many tracks in the song as i have set in this box, it starts to choke.

while you're there - look at Audio I/O (ASIO Device)) and make sure your drivers are set to the Layla/Darla/Gina ASIO Drivers, then open up the ASIO Control Panel and experiment with raising the buffer size. it'll increase your latency, but that beats crashing all the time.

hope this helps,

I just noticed the same thing tonight. I switched from 16 tracks to 24 with almost sixteen running, and my VST performance meter fell back dramatically. Go figure!!!

Poddy · #9 03-14-2003

Quote:

Originally posted by skankster
yo Poddy - did you ever find any solution to your problem, cuz i'm still having that problem and can't figure it out

skankster

No im still living with it. I just work around it now. I dont open other applications while Cubase is playing back the song. But i have found it does the same thing when i add another audio track. But not when i open or initiate plugins for some reason. Its a lil annoying but im more than used to it now.

Bass Master "K" · #10 03-15-2003

Hey guys. I'm not running a layla card, I'm using an aardvark Q-10, but I can say that XP is totally rock solid here.

If your having problems make sure that you go to www.musicxp.net and look for the tweeks that apply to your system. It really makes a difference.

Ashura · #11 03-18-2003

damn, im still crashing. i bumped of the number of tracks and what not, but its still acting choppy as ever. i really think i might have to move up to xp or at least 2000, but im not too thrilled about doing it mid-project.

Ashura · #12 03-18-2003

sorry, bumped UP the number of tracks, not off...i added 16-24 tracks extra like suggested.

skankster · #13 03-18-2003

Yeah - I haven't got to the bottom of my problems, either.

Bass Master "K" -

I have applied all those tweaks, and it did help the MIDI timing considerably in XP, but I'm beginning to think I have a Video driver conflict, because the main problem I have is when the cursor scrolls to the next screen in the arrange page (you know - when the song is playing along and it reaches the end of the page, causing a screen re-draw for the next page), both audio and MIDI drop out and the CPU meter jumps into the red briefly.

Ken

Randy5235 · #14 03-18-2003

Everyone that is having problems try this:
right click on my computer;
left click on properties;
click on the advanced tab;
click in the setting button under performance;
click on the advanced tab here as well;
under processor scheduling set it to backgfround services;

that should help ALOT
i know it doesn't make sense but it does( ASIO runs as a service on 2k/XP) plus the cubase manual suggests this heavily.
Randy5235

skankster · #15 03-19-2003

Randy -

Well I'll be a sumbeech - that seems to have helped quite a bit!!!

You're right - it's totally counter-intuitive, but it works!! What's *really* weird is that I had already gone to musicxp.net, and that is the 1st tweak they recommend - but my mind saw it the opposite (priority to applications) - I guess because it seems more logical that way.

Thanks a billion,

L'espion Noir · #16 03-21-2003

Thanx for the tips guys

Ashura · #17 03-23-2003

hey...im trying to get to these screens, but I'm not seeing anything past the 'Properties' tab on my Computer. I'm running 98, the second release, is this located somewhere else?

Randy5235 · #18 03-24-2003

yeah you won't have those screens on w98 but this is something for you to try it should help a bit
Right-Click the My Computer icon on the desktop, click Properties, click the Performance tab, click the File System tab, and under “Hard Disk”, change the setting “Typical Role of This Computer” from "Desktop Computer" to "Network Server".
hope that helps.

Poddy · #19 03-24-2003

http://forum.cubase.net/forum/Forum2/HTML/030148.html

This is a very useful thread which deals with the problem described here in.

Ashura · #20 03-26-2003

so far so good

i did some preliminary stuff with it and it's responding alot better than before. im gonna really try it out tonight tho, with the one song that's been a pain, so we'll see.
that thread from cubase.net is loooooong!!!

thanx for the help, really!

Ashura · #21 03-27-2003

I tried that song file out and im still seeing the high level on the CPU Performance. would anyone familiar with layla and/or 98 be willing to check out a few screenshots of my setup? maybe its something that I'm just not seeing...

skankster · #22 04-01-2003

i'll check 'em out

no promises, but it's worth a shot

send 'em on over

ken

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